Talk:Phagocytic vacuole

You can change the pronoun any which way and back again but it is not going to make it any more understandable to any of Andy's Homescholers which are the stated aim of this site. AlanE (talk) 00:54, 11 September 2016 (EDT)

It needs some work, but so do plenty of other pages. I just got confused over the language when I read through, so I thought I'd try to smooth it out a tad. This isn't my area of specialty in any way, but if you have some idea what they're talking about, might you want to describe it better? --David B ^(TALK) 01:12, 11 September 2016 (EDT)

That's the whole point, David. If you can't explain it to midteens then don't explain it at all. AlanE (talk) 01:39, 11 September 2016 (EDT)

Ah, okay. Good point, though some other pages here are pretty complex too. I don't know how well the "write for a middle-schooler" policy is really enforced. --David B ^(TALK) 23:23, 11 September 2016 (EDT)

OK, I did what I could to keep the page from being a complete farce. I really know nothing of the topic.

You should probably think of "write for a middle-schooler" not so much as a "policy" as a "foundational goal". The author of this article, User:DeborahB., along with the sisters User:SharonS and User:BethanyS were among the very early homeschool people. They probably appear in the Andy's original promotional video, though I don't really know. Please look at their user pages for a glimpse of a much happier and cooperative time. Those were the days. People were working together to build an encyclopedia, one article at a time. That's undoubtedly how that article came into being. (Did you know that there were actual "article creation competitions"?) Nowadays people just intensely beat the drum of their pet project, whether it be bestiality, why xxxx will be the worst year ever for atheism, why famous atheists should be willing to debate some obscure person, Hillary Clinton, relativity (yes, I'm guilty too) or file name extensions (you're a tiny bit guilty too, though you have the most wide-ranging interests of anyone here. That's not a criticism; you're one of our best people.)

So where does that leave us with vacuoles? I'm tempted to say that that article was a failed attempt on Deborah's part to create some serious content. And that it might as well be deleted. But I know you don't like to do that. So I patched it up as best I could with my zero knowledge of vacuoles and my almost-zero knowledge of web searches.

We just have to move on. SamHB (talk) 23:57, 12 September 2016 (EDT)

I find the insights and background you offer interesting! That certainly makes sense.

I try not to fixate on something too much, but you're probably right, I've been doing too much on file extensions. Please do point out such an obsession if you see it. Thanks for the complement, though I think it is also very important to have experts with a deep understanding of specific topics, rather than just people with a broad one. I found a tad more info on Phagocytic vacuoles, and added it, but most of what I found might as well have been Swahili. At least it's something, I guess. --David B ^(TALK) 01:34, 13 September 2016 (EDT)